by Jayne Castle
Sirens wailed in the distance. About time, Lydia thought.
“Who called you?” she asked. “Why didn’t you get to bed?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll explain later.” He eyed her closely. “Meanwhile, please tell me this dead guy doesn’t have anything to do with your new consulting job?”
“Oh, no, things are going great with the Hepscott project,” she said, relieved to be able to give a positive, upbeat answer for once. She cast an uneasy glance at Maltby. “This was a, uh, private matter.”
“Yeah, I was afraid of that.” Emmett’s expression hardened a little more. “This is connected to those questions you’ve been asking along Ruin Row for the past couple of weeks, isn’t it? The ones about your so-called Lost Weekend?”
She should have known that he was aware of the discreet inquiries she had begun making here in the Old Quarter. Emmett was an ex-Guild boss. He had connections.
“Maltby called me,” she said briskly. “I didn’t call him.”
“You just can’t let it go, can you? You’re determined to prove that you were the victim of some kind of ghost-hunter conspiracy. You won’t accept that what happened to you was a really bad accident.”
She narrowed her eyes. “This is precisely why I didn’t tell you I was doing some investigating on my own. I knew I’d get a lot of rez-static.”
“And this is why you would have gotten the static from me.” He pointed at the body. “Things like this happen in this part of town. At the very least, you should have called me before you came to ask your questions.”
“I knew that you would be getting back very late last night. I assumed you’d be sleeping late this morning.”
“Would you have called to invite me along if you had figured I’d be up?”
She was starting to feel cornered. “I know my way around the Old Quarter, Emmett. I’ve lived here all my life. I don’t need an escort.”
“Maybe not in the district where you live, but that’s over on the other side of the Quarter. In this neighborhood, you need an escort.”
She tightened her grip on the strap of the purse. “You know, this really isn’t the time for a lecture on personal safety.”
“On my way to this flophouse I passed three drug dealers who offered to score me some high-grade Chartreuse, a couple of hookers, a guy who tried to sell me a hot rez-screen, and one of those smiling idiots in green bathrobes who promised to reveal the secrets of true bliss if I would buy a book. And that was just in the half block between here and where I parked the Slider. I’ll be lucky if the car’s still there when I get back to it.”
“I’m sure you’ll find the Slider right where you left it. No one would dare touch it. Everyone knows who you are, now, Emmett, thanks to that stupid article in the Cadence Tattler last week.”
Much to Emmett’s disgust, the popular supermarket tabloid had featured a photo of him on the front page. The picture had been accompanied by some breathless prose questioning the real reason for his presence in Cadence. The headline, Next Guild Boss? had said it all.
Emmett fit his hands to his hips. “You scare the living daylights out of me, Lydia.”
“Nah. You’re a ghost-hunter. Nothing scares you.”
She spoke lightly but deep down she was relieved that he was backing off the argument. They were only a few short weeks into this very complicated relationship and things were unsettled enough as it was. They did not need a major confrontation.
They listened to the sirens halt abruptly outside in the lane.
Emmett raised his brows. “Mind if I ask what you plan to tell the cops?”
She winced. “I’m hoping they won’t ask too many questions.”
“This is the second time in a month that you’ve reported a dead body. Got a hunch there are going to be a few questions.”
Someone pounded on the door of the apartment.
“I’ll go let them in,” Lydia said. She turned and went down the hall.
When she opened the front door of the apartment she found two medics, a uniformed police officer, and an all-too-familiar face crowded together in the dark hall.
“Hello, Miss Smith,” Detective Alice Martinez said. “You do turn up in some interesting places.” She switched her tough cop’s gaze to a point beyond Lydia’s left shoulder. “So do you, London. What is it? The two of you can’t think of anything more romantic to do on a date than find dead bodies?”
One of the medics looked at Emmett. “Where’s the dead guy?”
“Down that hallway,” Emmett said.
The two medics and the officer headed for the study.
Lydia did not like the dark cloud she sensed gathering over her head. “What are you doing here, Detective?” she asked warily. “This isn’t a homicide.”
Alice did not take her attention off Emmett. “Actually, I was looking for you, Mr. London. I called Miss Smith’s office to see if she knew where you were and was told that both of you were probably at this address. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Miss Smith had just phoned in a report about a dead man.”
“Detective.” Emmett inclined his head politely.
Lydia got the impression he was not surprised to see Alice Martinez. The cloud overhead got darker and more ominous. There would be rain any minute.
“Why do you want to talk to Emmett?” she asked sharply.
“I need to ask him a few questions,” Alice said. “Just a formality.”
“What?” Lydia was outraged. “You can’t be serious. Surely you don’t think that Emmett had anything to do with Professor Maltby’s death? I’m the one who found the body. Emmett is not involved in this. He just happened to be here when you arrived.”
Alice and Emmett both looked at her. Lydia got a nasty feeling that she had overreacted. Not the smart thing to do around a cop, she told herself.
“I hadn’t planned to talk to Mr. London about Maltby’s death,” Alice said calmly. “Although, I may have to revisit that decision. But we’ll let that go for now. The reason I tracked him down this morning was to ask him some questions concerning another problem that I’m handling at the moment.”
“Problem?” Lydia glanced from Alice’s face to Emmett’s and then back again. A fresh wave of dread ruffled her nerve endings. “What problem? What is going on here?”
“Someone tried to kill Mercer Wyatt early this morning,” Emmett said quietly.
“Whoever it was nearly succeeded,” Alice added. “Wyatt is in intensive care at Cadence Memorial Hospital under an armed guard. The doctors finished operating a couple of hours ago. His condition is listed as critical.”
Lydia relaxed slightly. “I see. Well, that’s unfortunate but I can’t say that I’m terribly surprised. Wyatt is a Guild boss, after all. No one rises to that position without making enemies. Guild politics are notoriously messy. At least they are here in Cadence.”
“True,” Alice agreed in a very neutral tone of voice.
Lydia frowned. “So, why do you want to question Emmett?”
“Because the word on the street is that he’s the new acting head of the Cadence Guild.” Alice’s smile was ice cold. “The way I heard it, he will take over permanently if Wyatt doesn’t make it out of intensive care.”
2
HE HAD KNOWN this would not be easy.
Three hours later Emmett watched Lydia de-rez the lock on the front door of her apartment. She had not said a word during the drive home following the formalities at Detective Martinez’s office. The continuing silence was a bad sign. Lydia was normally never loathe to let him know exactly what she was thinking.
It was as though she was suffering some form of shock but he was not certain how to deal with it. For starters, he was not sure what had upset her the most, finding Maltby’s body or the news that the man whose bed she was sharing on a fairly frequent basis was the temporary chief of the Cadence Guild.
He had the unpleasant feeling that it was the second piece of news that had made her go tense and
silent.
Lydia was convinced that she had good reason not to trust ghost-hunters and she made no secret of her negative opinion of the Guild. That she was involved in an affair with him did not mean she had changed her mind on either point, he reminded himself.
And the fact that she had been quietly pursuing her own private investigation of the mystery of her Lost Weekend without asking for his help really pissed him off.
They were sleeping together, damn it. That meant they were supposed to discuss stuff before she ran around doing potentially dicey things like trying to find proof of criminal actions on the part of a couple of Guild men.
The fact that he would have put his foot down very heavily on such a project did not constitute grounds for keeping her plans to herself, he thought. In spite of her low opinion of the Guild, she probably didn’t have a clue of the kind of risks she was running.
He had grown up in the Guild and he had controlled the Resonance City organization for six years. He knew the risks all too well.
The first thing to do was to get her talking again, he decided. This was a relationship. According to all the advice gurus, communication was important in a relationship.
He followed her into the cramped foyer of her small apartment, trying to think of a way to get the conversation going.
“All things considered,” he said, shrugging out of his leather jacket, “I thought that went well.”
She dropped her purse on a small table. “Neither of us is sitting in jail, if that’s what you mean.”
Okay, it was a start. At least she was speaking to him again.
A large wad of lint scampered across the floor on six unseen little legs. Two bright blue eyes sparkled innocently from the depths of a tangle of ratty-looking gray fur.
“Hello, Fuzz.” Lydia scooped the dust-bunny up, kissed the top of his head, and settled him on her shoulder. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you. I have had a very difficult day.”
The dust-bunny blinked his cute azure eyes at Emmett, who was not fooled for a minute. He had seen Fuzz’s second set of eyes, the ones he used for hunting at night. The little fluff ball looked as harmless as something that had been swept out from under the bed but at heart he was a highly efficient little predator. There was a saying about dust-bunnies. By the time you see the teeth, it’s too late.
Fortunately he and Fuzz had discovered that they had a couple of things in common. One of them was Lydia.
“Lookin’ good, Fuzz.” Emmett ruffled the dust-bunny’s fur and was rewarded with a humming sound. Fuzz, at least, was happy to see him.
“I’m going to get out of this business suit,” Lydia announced. She turned down the hall toward the bedroom. “And then I’m going to have a glass of wine. Probably two glasses.”
“I’ll open a bottle,” Emmett said, trying to sound helpful.
He spoke to thin air. She had already disappeared into the bedroom.
“Ghost-shit.” This was not going well at all.
He went into the small kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, and brooded for a while on the selection of items inside. Among the limited offerings was a carton of milk and some leftover macaroni-and-cheese casserole. On the top shelf was a bottle of the truly dreadful white wine that Lydia kept on hand. The stuff was, in his opinion, only a couple of steps above Green Ruin and Acid Aura, the beverages of choice among the derelicts and down-and-outers who drifted through the Old Quarter.
But there wasn’t much choice so he hauled out the jug and set it down on the counter.
Lately he had managed to avoid having to drink Lydia’s lousy wine because the two of them had been spending a lot of time at his new place a few blocks away. He not only had a better view of the Dead City from the terrace of his town house, he kept more palatable vintages on hand.
A few weeks ago when he had set out to find living space here in Cadence, he’d had his choice of properties. The real estate agent had tried to sell him one of the big gated estates up on Ruin View Hill. After all, money was not exactly an issue. He had made plenty of it while running the Resonance Guild and he had good instincts when it came to investments.
But he’d had a couple of major priorities when it came to housing. One of them was not wanting Mercer Wyatt and his wife, Tamara, for next-door neighbors. The other and far more important objective had been to be as close to Lydia as possible.
He figured that one month into this rocky relationship was probably way too soon to ask her to move in with him, let alone consider marriage, so he’d opted for proximity. That meant a house in the Old Quarter. Besides, he liked the vibes in the neighborhood.
The real estate agent had eventually given up trying to make him see the advantages of a mansion on the hill and had found him an attractive, post–Era of Discord town house that had been recently remodeled and redecorated.
Emmett had taken Lydia to the house one afternoon while he was considering the purchase just to see how she responded. The glow of delight in her lagoon blue eyes as she walked through the spacious rooms and out onto the terrace to see the glorious view of the Dead City had sealed the deal as far as he was concerned. She looked terrific in his house. Right at home.
He had been hoping that, in a month or two, the time would be right to point out how much money she could save if she gave up her cramped apartment and moved in with him. After that he had planned to ease her gently into the idea of getting married.
He would have preferred to go straight into a full-blown Covenant Marriage with all the legal and social bonds attached to such an alliance. Covenant Marriages were almost impossible to dissolve. Obtaining a divorce required teams of lawyers, a lot of money, and years of patience. And then there was the social stigma to live down.
Most people went first for the standard, easily renewable, one-year Marriage of Convenience to test the waters with a partner, although if someone accidentally got pregnant in an MC it was understood that the couple would immediately obtain a Covenant Marriage license.
The First Generation of colonists from Earth hadn’t established the rigid strictures of Covenant Marriage because they had been a prudish lot; rather they had been a desperate lot. Two hundred years ago when the mysterious energy field in space known as the Curtain had opened, providing a gate between Earth and several other inhabitable worlds, the settlers had chosen to make their new homes on Harmony.
But shortly after they had established their colonial towns and villages, the energy field had vanished without any warning, stranding them. The Curtain had never reopened.
Cut off from all contact with Earth, with families separated from their home-planet relatives forever, the high-tech engineering and farming equipment falling apart because of a lack of replacement parts, the colonial leaders had buckled down and concentrated on drawing up plans that would ensure the survival of their communities.
In the effort to create a social structure that could withstand the unknown rigors and stresses that lay ahead, they had fashioned the Republic of City-States that bound all of the colonial cities on the planet into a single federation. They had then proceeded to craft the stern laws that governed Covenant Marriage.
A Marriage of Convenience was the great loophole in the law. It was designed for folks who wanted to rez a little wild, untuned amber before getting serious and for prudent couples who wished to try out a relationship before making an unbreakable commitment. But eventually mature, responsible adults were supposed to settle into a Covenant Marriage. After all these years it was still considered the cornerstone of a stable society.
As far as he was concerned, there was no need to do any trial runs with this relationship, Emmett thought. He couldn’t envision a future without Lydia. He would have been happy to go straight into a Covenant Marriage. But he had known that he would be lucky to get her to agree to start with an MC.
Lydia had a lot of issues when it came to ghost-hunters. He had tried to distance himself from Guild politics as far as possible, but he knew that s
he still fretted about his connections to the organization.
Now, thanks to the near-fatal assault on Mercer Wyatt a few hours ago, there was no point in even raising the issue of marriage in the immediate future.
He poured two glasses of the evil white wine and put the bottle back in the refrigerator. There was no sound from the bedroom. Lydia had had plenty of time to change into a pair of jeans and a sweater. What was keeping her?
Fuzz tumbled silently into the kitchen and looked up at him from the floor. The dust-bunny bobbed anxiously.
“What is it, pal? Want a pretzel?” Emmett removed the lid of the jar. Dust-bunnies were omnivorous. Lydia usually fed Fuzz whatever she had fixed for herself. But when it came to snacks, he had a pronounced taste for pretzels.
But Fuzz ignored the pretzel. Instead he made an odd noise, a sound that was very close to a tiny growl.
“Okay, no pretzel.” Emmett replaced the lid of the jar. “Something wrong, buddy?”
A tremor passed over Fuzz’s fur. He looked as if he was trying to bristle, not an easy thing for a ball of lint to do. Then he bounced a couple of times, turned and scampered a few feet back toward the bedroom, halted and tumbled back into the kitchen. He bristled some more.
“Right.” Emmett picked up the two glasses of wine. “You want to play the Find Lydia game, is that it?”
Fuzz drifted swiftly back down the hall toward the bedroom.
Emmett followed warily. They had played this game many times in recent weeks both indoors and outside on the street or in a nearby park. Fuzz loved it. The rules were simple. Emmett would look at Fuzz and say, find Lydia, and Fuzz would rush off gleefully to lead him to wherever she happened to be at that moment.
But this time there was a sense of urgency in Fuzz’s demeanor that was new.
At the doorway to the bedroom Emmett paused, trying to get a handle on the situation before he made a move.
Lydia stood at the window, her back turned toward him. She was still in her severely tailored, skirted business suit. She hadn’t even removed the jacket. Her face was in her hands and her shoulders were shaking.
